Finding Forever
by Nagia
Summary: It's an old story, love is, told many times and by many people. The good ones don't feel old. [6. Preferred Pain. Asuma would take a knife to his gut over the pain he feels when he visits Ino in the hospital. AsuKure, Ino, AU]
1. inoten DID NOT ASK

**Finding Forever**

a collection of themes**  
**

* * *

_november 1; the heart asks pleasure first; inoten_

* * *

They did not ask if it was right. "Right" was never something they discussed, a subject they avoided by some unspoken agreement. They never thought about that fact, either. They were not right or wrong; they simply were, and were together. 

They did not ask if it was beautiful. Honestly, it had started because of Tenten's taste in shoes and a need for flowers and the sudden realization that Ino had an accuracy score eight percent above kunoichi average. (Tenten still looks at her shoes and thinks of a certain blonde. She remembers solid blue eyes and a quick laugh and an overbearing demeanour.) A relationship with such a simple, plain start could never be beautiful.

"Do you have a mission this weekend?"

"No, I'm free. Mind if I come over Saturday afternoon?"

They knew better than to question this love of theirs. The balance of their personalities was fragile and sometimes simple, sometimes complicated. Hard for outsiders to understand. There was no real _need_ to question it.

So they did not ask if it was right, or if it was beautiful, or in fact if it was anything at all.

Maybe that is why Tenten will remember it, years later, when the ANBU mask has started to crack from use and she realises just how few faces and memories she has of the long string of just-this-side-of-nameless lovers.

_(these then are the fragmented remains of her heart)_

* * *


	2. shikaino ANIMAL PRESENCE

**Finding Forever**

a collection of themes

* * *

_november 2; animal presence; shikaino (minor nejiten)_

* * *

**i.**

Ino is beginning to understand why Tenten avoids the girls' nights in at any opportunity. At the moment, they all sit in Ino's living room, drinking a sweetened tea and talking. The topic of conversation somehow wends its way back (as it almost always does, but that's not Tenten's reason for hating these gatherings) to men.

"I don't see why he likes you," says a kunoichi whose name Ino can never remember. Even nicknames seem to slide away from her grasp on the girl.

She stirs a stick of honey into her tea, one hand on her chin. "I mean, he _hates_ to work. So why does he like you?"

"Must be because men are shallow," another adds. This one titters, and Ino watches Tenten's eyes narrow. A slender hand, with well-groomed and shiny pink fingernails lifts to cover a pair of plump, pink lips. The nails gleam in the light, hiding the way the girl's mouth glistens, wet with lip gloss, and smothering her laughter. After a moment, a perfectly waxed and plucked eyebrow arches. "We all know what they want."

Her smile is warm, returned by most of the girls. They all laugh. A shared joke. They are sisters in this shared pain; beautiful, desired, _stared_ at and _wanted_, and touched and felt and _used_.

The kunoichi who specialise in seduction often take a vicious joy in the culmination of their art: overturning the dynamic, going from victim to victimiser.

They all have sway over men, they know. They are young and beautiful. Soft and demure and gentle and _round_ in all the _right_ places, with voices like snowfall and ankles like willows and hair like silk. Like strands of spiderweb they entrap and entangle men-- the sweetly sexual cherry-pink virgin or the snapdragon witch-wife with eyes that smoulder. They drive them to trust, to fondness (_interesting fact_, Ino remembers Asuma-sensei once saying, _but 'fond' used to mean 'foolish'_), love them and leave them, pushing them away and somehow drawing them back in and then there is blood.

And women have this power, this sorry sisterhood says, because men are stupid. They split their brains between two places. They are shallow and silly and sex-crazed. And all the while, Ino knows, they ignore their own follies.

At each gathering, Ino finds, there are more and more little moments of clarity. She hears something, hears the appropriate laughter and warm agreements, or carefully worded, inoffensive disagreements, and startles a little. Her eyes widen as she realises: _gods, **I** used to be like that!_

It is not a good feeling.

"Oh, for the love," Sakura murmurs. She holds her mug to her chest, body still and spine straight in a fashion Ino has come to understand means that she is angry, extremely angry, but doesn't dare explode. They've all learned what explosions do. "Ino-pig's whatever-it-is with her whatever-he-is is _their_ business. And if anybody's going to dig into that," a fake laugh, "it's going to be me."

Hinata nods her agreement. She turns her teacup in circles. "W-we wanted to be n-nice, after all. Didn't we?"

Conversation pauses for a moment as they all register and process the excruciatingly subtle threat. Everyone knows just how not nice Hyuuga can be, if they choose. Ino knows from experience, garnered in comforting Hinata and Tenten, just how sedately, calmly, classily, politely _nasty_ they can be. They sting and they cut and they hurt in cold, calm voices and with polite or even mild words.

Tenten (barely-a-girl Tenten, the others sometimes joke) plays with her tarot cards. Idly, she pulls one out and holds it so they can all see. The illustration is beautiful; classical-looking, like an ukiyo-e. A man holds a woman in a dancer's dive, surrounded by flames. Despite the lack of detail, the shiny surface of the card looks like the picture of sensuality. The angles of their arms and legs, the beautiful curve of the woman's hair flowing from her head-- it all looks so intimate.

This is more than a dance, more than romance, more than intimacy, this card is _lust_.

Bold black characters split the card at the top and bottom: Strength.

Conversation stops.

"I don't think it's wrong that guys like sex," Tenten says. Her voice is high-pitched, faintly accented. In person, she sometimes seems too demure to be a woman with a kill count to make several macho ANBU writhe in jealousy. She smiles, winks, flushes a little. "I know _I_ do."

They share another laugh, although Ino is sure that most of them remind themselves of barely-a-girl-Tenten. And then they say no more on the matter.

There are other things to talk about.

"Did you hear about what Miyagi Nodoka told her instructor?"

"I'd call it old news, but it's just so--!"

"I don't think I'd have ever had the nerve to say something like that."

"Well, yeah, but you didn't have the nerve to ask questions. You were almost as bad as our dear Hinata!"

**ii.**

She knows he's there because she smells the cigarettes. He isn't trying to hide his presence, for once, and it makes her smile. She taps neatly clipped but unpainted fingernails against his arm, her smile widening a little.

Ino isn't wearing any lipgloss; it wiped off on the apple she started to eat as soon as the other girls left. The tea, she consigned to the sink. She left the sweets and cookies to Sakura, who will probably give them to the class she student-teaches. The full-time teacher (Sakura's boss) is a sexist asshole. None of them feel anything at all about giving him rambuntious, unteachable students.

"Hi," she says, voice slightly lower than normal.

She knows what he wants. She isn't ashamed about wanting it too. That's what catches a kunoichi, eventually. You find yourself hating men, hating sex, hating your body and what it can do.

He smiles, face half-hidden in the shadow of her kitchen, and has to hold onto the cigarette with his teeth. The cigarette is a single point of red-orange glowing light; a puff of breath and it gets brighter, small and cylindrical like the candy she always imagined The Mean Men Who Take You Away giving out to the Naughty Girls Who Trust When They Shouldn't. She reaches out and flicks at his topknot, laughter breezy like the smoke drifting out her open window, and teases, "You'd better not try to kiss me with that in your mouth."

"Pushy, pushy," he says. "Who said I planned on kissing you at all? Maybe I was just stopping by before heading cloud watching."

"Cloud watching... _in my bedroom_," she nearly cackles.

He mock-grumbles and mutters, "You wear me out."

"You love me anyway."

She plucks the cigarette out of his mouth and tosses it away. It lands in one of the tea-cups she left three-quarters full of water and soap in her sink to rinse the honey out. The cigarette sputters and smokes a little, a faint hissing sound rises from the water, and then the light dies and the ashes spread out.

As she half-drags-half-leads him up the stairs, she notices that Tenten must have dropped her tarot card as she left. It is still there, bold kanji proclaiming STRENGTH, gleaming like the nickname-defying kunoichi's lips in the night mix of streetlights and moonlight.

_(tarot is right; there is strength in lust sometimes)_

* * *

(minor note: an alternate name for the 'strength' card is 'lust'. also, Asuma's random fact is true.)

* * *


	3. team gai PEOPLESICKNESS

**Finding Forever**

a collection of themes

* * *

_november 3; my pillow won't tell me where he has gone; team gai_

* * *

The twenty-seventh of November and the first of January are the two days a year that Tenten and Neji do not spend together. 

On the twenty-seventh of November, each November, every November, without fail, Neji haunts the Memorial. He kneels seiza before the stone where they carved the characters 'Rock Lee'. He lights incense and leaves curry and a piece of green paper, folded to resemble a turtle.

And then he sits and reads the bloodstained and battered notebook he removed from his best friend's beautifully broken body. Neji will never know if his corpse robbing is a sick thing, or fortunate, or simply one of those shinobi oddities. Should he have this tiny journal, storing it safely in a locked drawer, only to retrieve once a year?

Or should he have consigned it to the fire with Lee's corpse?

His fingers trace each line of text. His lips do not move as he reads.

It hurts, to watch his best friend grow up through this book. He has stored not only Gai's numerous words of wisdom, but also his own thoughts and musings and desires. Some of them as are profound as, "Tenten is a little afraid of herself, I think," while others are as inane as, "Ichiraku-san's spiciest curry doesn't seem so spicy any longer."

Neji never makes it much further than halfway through before he must bow his head and close his eyes. He regrets the careless cruelties, the thousand coldnesses, the way he treated his team-mate in that first year-- but it isn't regret that hurts so much.

He cannot immediately name a thing he wouldn't give up in order to have his team reunited again.

He wishes he could hear his best friend's voice again. The words on the page are not enough, especially when he reaches the middle, where the blood has pooled the thickest. On four specific pages, the four pages Neji wants to read the most, the brown smudges are so thick that he can catch only scattered characters.

Neji stays there until sundown of 28 November.

* * *

Tenten, on the other hand, retreats to the back of her private forge and opens a locked box. From it she removes various articles of clothing. Almost all of the clothes are green. Half of them are spandex. Some bloody, some clean. 

Her hands tremble as she smoothes the cloth, running it through fingers that twitch and jerk. Her shoulders shake, and tears blur her vision.

The clothing's scent-- the scent of his skin, of soap, of blood-- is always overpowering. It is as if the scent stores itself in the box, just waiting for a means of escape, and then explodes into the air when the box opens.

There is always a shaky, rattling sob.

Sometimes it's hard to stand up. If she falls, she stays there.

Sometimes she cries.

Every time, she remembers. She remembers him. She loved Lee. Maybe not the kind of love that makes you get married or have sex, but she loved him.

She always hoped to spend the rest of her life with all her boys, not just one. Marriage had never been in the picture she had of her life-- and it was partly because of that.

All her boys (Gai-sensei hadn't been a boy, of course, and at the time of his death, neither had Lee, but somehow, she had always thought of them all that way).

All.

Not just one.

So she inhales his scent, remembers the bandages and the bowl cut and the _smile_--

And she doesn't leave the forge until her throat and head hurt. When the grief becomes enough physical pain, when her voice is raw from crying, when her eyes are bleary and red, she packs the clothing away neatly. A tiny skeleton key turns in the lock, the box makes a clicking sound, and then she lifts it into its safe place, closes the cabinet door, and locks that too.

Then she goes home and does not wait for Neji. Instead, she looks through photo albums of all Lee's past birthday parties. She tries to get through even one album without crying, but it never happens. Her record is three-quarters of the way through their first book, but today she doesn't even make three pages.

After the photo albums have been read and cried over in that sweetly painful ritual, she watches their equivalent of home videos. They never really recorded things with video cameras. Looking at things in colour was never really Gai's style, Tenten generally forgot, Neji always found the idea of artificial eyes unsettling, and Lee... Well, Lee tended to get so caught up in whatever was happening that video cameras just didn't register.

So the footage they do have is scattered. Moments here and there, when somebody remembered and Neji didn't get pissy about it. Even so, the flickering colours and shoddy camera work are always entrancing to her. She can watch the old tapes and DVDs for an hour or two.

And then she sits back and tries to list every successful mission or survivable failure they've had.

It's always harder than you'd think.

* * *

At twenty-three fifty-nine every thirty-first of December, Tenten bundles up in warm clothing, grabs a knife and a roll of duct tape, and prepares to ignore all the New Year celebrations. As soon as midnight arrives, she walks out the door, locking everything up behind her, leaving Neji to sleep until five. 

The walk to Gai-sensei's old apartment is never very far, though with people out and about (hurrying to or from New Years' parties, usually) it always takes longer than it should. She wishes people a happy New Year, bows and smiles and vocally hopes they have good luck this year. They always look a little sadly at her; she ignores it-- what they think of her grief is their problem. She's still functioning, and that's what matters, right?

Right.

She stores all the hurt and sadness and homesickness-for-people-who-aren't-there-anymore up. She pushes it down and ignores it or tells it to wait until the birthdays arrive.

This day used to be _his_ day, so now it's hers. And nobody, nobody, _nobody_ is going to take that away from her.

She unlocks the door to his old apartment. The nearly astronomical ANBU salary that Gai pulled for she doesn't remember how long enabled him to buy the apartment. He'd had it fully paid off since just after she became his genin-gakusei.

She and Neji own the apartment now.

It takes Tenten several tries to open the door, as usual. Her fingers always tremble with the cold keys and the freezing metal, and the key on the third lock always, _always_ jams. She'd oil it, but Gai swore he would, as soon as they got back from whatever mission they'd pulled. Since he never got around to it, she figures she should let it slide, too.

Aside from that sticky lock, she keeps the place well tended. It's like her own personal burial vault, or a museum. Museum is probably a better word.

The heat clicks on (she knows it isn't practical to keep this place up like somebody actually uses it, but she can't _not_, because this was his place) and she unpacks all the linens out of their cardboard boxes.

She pulls the mattress onto his bed frame. On go the dark green sheets, the green plaid comforter, the green blanket with white fur lining. She even makes the bed with hospital corners. She doesn't even do those for her own bed, to Neji's eternal irritation.

After that, she heads into the living room. She turns on the television and the DVD player (it took them so long, Tenten remembers, to convince Gai-sensei to buy one. He'd been reluctant because he wasn't sure 'his' movies would be on DVD) and makes sure everything is hooked up correctly. She's pretty sure it is, because it always is, but you never know, right?

Right.

After that, she cocoons herself in green blankets, pops in the DVDs and watches black and white movies for a few hours. Gai owns twelve DVDs, each one burned with as many movies will fit. Of those twelve, a single disc consists of "talkie" movies, and not even half a disc has movies made with Technicolor. Almost all of his movies are black and white silent films.

Tenten gave him a Humphrey Bogart DVD-set. He thanked her enthusiastically, but she doesn't have to look to find the cases: they're in their collector's edition jacket, which is still in its shrink-wrap.

Kakashi makes a point of showing up eventually. They always arrange to meet at eight, but he usually shows up around twelve or twelve-thirty. It's almost always an hour before she actually expects him, and it's usually around the time she gets to fixing curry and preparing to request that Ninkame visit.

They talk for a few moments, but it is stilted and odd:

"Sorry I'm late. I saw a rat on my way here; you know how unlucky that is."

"Hatake-san, it's the Year of the Rat."

He says nothing to that, so she merely sighs and acknowledges that of course, Hatake-san, seeing the year's zodiac animal on the first day of the year is a sign unlucky enough to change your course for.

They're always quiet for a while. After she's chopped enough meat for the curry and sets the sharp knives aside, he says, "I never actually hated him, you know."

She replies, voice mild, "You never cared much, either, I know."

He doesn't say anything to that, because in his mind, he deserves it. Because he's Kakashi. And also because it's true-- he cared, because he and Gai were actually ifriends/i in a weird way, but he never dared to show it. But mostly, it's because he's Kakashi.

It's a load of bullshit, but hey, this is Gai's day. Well, was Gai's day.

After a little more stilted conversation ("You still miss him?" "I'll be fine."), he leaves.

She eats her curry alone, watching the silent films. She fills a bowl for him and leaves it untouched.

When the marathon ends, she requests again that Ninkame visit. She has no right to summon him, nor any right to expect him to answer. But in memory of Gai, she calls out to the tortoise, and in memory of Gai, he comes.

They talk. The subjects do not matter. Sometimes she cries. He is patient with her, but it is always clear: he has no obligation to her, no ireal/i reason to stay. He is here in memory of a friend, a valiant and fallen man. Her grief is none of his concern.

She does not go home until midnight. Before she does, she packs everything back up and wishes her sensei a happy birthday.

_ (because you were here, i feel this way)_

* * *

Stopping here because I have to. 

Also, I keep promising never to write another Gai or Lee death-fic, and, ahahaha, HERE I AM DOING IT AGAIN.

I have no willpower.


	4. hinanaru INVISIBLE NEWMADE THING

**Finding Forever**

a collection of themes

* * *

_november 4; untrodden ways; hinanaru  
_

* * *

She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove,  
A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love:  
--Wordsworth, "She Dwelt Among the untrodden ways" 

Two and a half years. Nine hundred and twelve days. This girl, the girl He does not see, she has counted every one of them. Not on paper, never on paper, but the count is still there. She has it memorised, a number in her internal clock. It is with her when she rises, it is with her when she falls asleep.

She writes the number in her hair-- it's long now, the way He would like it. Nobody notices, or maybe they don't care. She grows it out, and whether it's for Him or not, nobody could tell you.

She writes the number in the bruises and bandages and lacerations she keeps on her skin. She doesn't bother with healing salves anymore. By the time one fades or heals or just scabs over, her father will have given her five more in the name of Training. When she asks him if he thinks she's changed, he says only that their blood-right is surpassing strength.

After a while, she stops asking. She'll measure her changes for for herself. A while after that, she stops measuring. But the counting continues-- she counts and counts and counts and cannot stop.

He is not there to notice the bruises. She would not complain of them to anyone else. The bruises go unnoticed. Her number goes unheard.

So this girl, the girl no-one sees, she writes the number in the threads of her new jacket. She tells no-one that she wears it for Him. No-one asks.

She writes and writes and no-one reads. She counts and no-one hears.

Two and a half years. Nine hundred and twelve days.

She is bruised for Him. She is tired for Him. She has seen the home of her blood-right too many times to count for Him. She has changed for Him. She is a new-made thing for Him.

This new-made thing is still the girl He does not see.

_(her paths they are remote but they are not removed; she would know this, but she never sees him watching her. that is why he wears sunglasses.)_

* * *


	5. nejiten LONG ROAD

**Finding Forever**

a collection of themes

* * *

_november 5; white in the moon the long road lies; nejiten_

* * *

She'll reforge the sword on her back. Melt it down totally and hammer it back into shape. It won't be the same sword anymore, but it'll keep her sane and keep him away. She's already replaced the hilt twice.

A betrothal token. The equivalent of a legal document for the gypsies-- a legally binding document, only wihout the benefit of signature or witness. It binds no-one in specific; merely because she holds it, he could demand that she marry him.

She'd pass it off on some other girl, but it's a _sword_, good metal. It somehow seems less like she's destroyed or lost the sword if she reforges it than if she gives it away.

Idly, she rubs at the shining leather she wears over the qipao. Hardened leather armour, sewn into a shape that's compatible with the dress. She's lived in it for weeks, but as she travels on foot, legs a blur, everything inside her churning and warm, it seems wrong. She is not a gypsy, not really; born settled, hired out, she is a pretender to her birthright. What was so important that she was wiling to comply?

Not weeks, she realises when she stops for breath. It's an instinctive thing, now, to look at the moon and remember what it looked like when she last saw it standing here. Her hand curls into a fist, drifts to her hip. Her chin lifts, gaze rising skyward, and she feels the high, stiff collar that encloses her neck. The way the leather weighs her down, holds her in place, makes her aware of the line her body forms. The sight of the moon and stars knocks all that awareness right out of her head. The moon's size is almost exactly the same as it was, so it should have been about twenty-eight days, but the stars are all wrong. The constellations are--

Late spring.

How did she not notice the gradual freezing? How did what must have been bitter cold seem so normal? How could the nights have felt so warm and perfect in her skin? How could she not have grown hot as the earth warmed again?

How have seven months passed without her realising it was more than just a few weeks?

A ninja would have noticed, she tells herself. A ninja would have seen. Could this mean that she's more gypsy than she thought?

No, that's not possible. None of this is possible. She must not be going home now, this is a dream. A horrible, frightening dream. She'll wake up tomorrow and it will be late fall and she will still be in Fire Country. Maybe on the very edges of the north-east, but still in her home country.

But she won't because-- because she's only just now crossed back into north-western edge of the Land of the Waterfall. She is still so far from Konoha. She still has so far to go.

But she'll keep moving of course. That's what she does. She's not going to give up now, not when she has so far to go. She's got so high to rise. She knows she can make it.

Of course, when she gets back, they'll will spend days on end training. The tendency to fight in circles never left, but she's probably dropped in skill. She's gained other things, she knows she's a better fighter all around, but not as a kunoichi. Not as a ninja. Not against people of his class.

He's going to smear her all over their practice ground for a month.

She'll just have to play pinball with his Kaiten for a few months after that. He'll go ping-ping-ping against the trees, the trees will make splinter-crash-CRUNCH noises, and she'll laugh and everything will be fine.

Tenten readjusts the armour and her satchel, idly scratching where the baldric connects with her back, and resumes her run.

_(she puts one foot in front of the other and just keeps walking. she'll never stop. the road goes on.)_

* * *


	6. asukure ino PREFERRED PAIN

**Finding Forever**

a collection of themes

* * *

_november 6; come with me, under my coat; asuma, ino_

* * *

Some days, he gets this itch. Not really an itch, more like a burn with an inescapable need to soothe it. It starts in his mouth. If he doesn't do anything about it, it spreads down into his throat and lungs, and, left alone, just spreads out from there. If he doesn't give in, the sweating starts, and shortness of temper, and he starts to get a headache. 

Most of the time, he senses the itch coming. It can try all it wants to creep up on him, but he can feel it. He usually heads it off when the need is in his mouth.

But there are days where he, crazy bastard that he is, just sits back and does nothing about it. It's almost like he's _watching_ as his body goes through the minor withdrawal symptoms.

Nicotine withdrawal is a physical thing. He can address it with the gum, he can assuage it by changing his patch, he can make things fucking _suck_ by pretending he's trying to quit cold-turkey and chucking the gum and ripping off the patch. But in the end, the option to stop torturing himself and just light up a goddamn fag is still there.

It's there on every street corner. On specific roads, it lines the sidewalks. Machine after machine after machine, metal and a little battered and the almost-totally-ninja-proof-plastic a little warped. Coil after coil, slot after slot, with cartons full of rolled-up death sentences. 

He prefers the itch-burn of addiction to the whatever-it-is he feels whenever he sits alone in his apartment, or sees flowers, or hears the word 'genjutsu'. He does not enjoy the tiny, tingling pain of ripping a nicotine patch off his bicep and chucking it as soon as he gets that _craving_.

But he finds it preferable to the profound sadness and resignation he feels when he sees the remains of Team Eight. 

He misses Kurenai. He doesn't say it often. He tries not to think about it. It's a fact, every bit as much a fact as "Asuma has bad breath when he wakes up in the mornings". It's just a plain, straight fact, almost a _statistic_, really: Asuma misses Kurenai.

And Asuma would take a knife to his gut over the pain he feels when he visits Ino in the hospital.

* * *

"I dreamed about mirrors last night," says she.

He says nothing because he thinks she isn't finished, even though really she is.

"And then you dreamed you were me again, didn't you?" Says he when he realises that she was, in fact, finished.

"No," she says, "I dreamed about mirrors. They were broken.

They are quiet for a while because he can't be loud anymore. She can't take quiet, never could, and that's one of the very few things that's the same about her. She says, "Am I still your little girl? When I'm not me?"

He doesn't say anything until he knows what he should say. She was never his little girl. She should be shouting at him right now, or pushing Shikamaru or Chouji into something that they don't want to do. He doesn't actually know what he should say but he thinks he's come up with something that will pass. "You're never not you, Ino."

But it doesn't pass. She cries. He hates it when she cries.

He hates it when she cries so he says, "Ino is still vital to Team Asuma. No matter who she is or where she is or how many pieces she's in, Team Asuma still loves her." He doesn't address the little girl part of the question because she was never his little girl and never wanted to be.

It doesn't matter. He might as well have remained silent, because the crying subsides, and turns into anger and confusion, and it's crying again. She isn't sure which "one" she is again, he knows. She seems to lose track of that a lot. Inoshi always seemed so sad when he realised his daughter's talent at the family jutsu. Asuma finally understands why.

He hates watching the splintering of her personality thanks to her family jutsu and jutsu-induced schizophrenia. He wishes she would be pushy and diet and try not to listen to him. Even though it's suicidal and horrible, he wishes Team Asuma had taken the mission to follow Hidan and Kakuzu and not Team Kurenai. Maybe Ino would be stronger, if she'd survived that.

"I hate this," Ino says, rubbing the tears from her eyes and looking up at him like she expects him to fix it.

That's what he hates. It's not just seeing his team's indomitable kunoichi go insane, lose her sense of self, lose her ability to be herself. It's the fact that he wants to be able to do something about it, that she _wants_ him to do something about it, and there's nothing he can do. He can only watch.

And she doesn't even blame him for that.

_(he misses the days when she wasn't his little girl, when she was a screeching harpy, but he'll never admit it.)_

* * *


End file.
